Silent Hill: Endless Night

by Jamie Dodd

Journalist Richard Brent knows all there is to know about Silent Hill. But he's about to get closer than he ever imagined.

silent hill endless night

A short story by Jamie Dodd

08 – 09/03/05

(Many thanks to the games developers and walkthrough sites for the history of Silent Hill)

"Silent Hill®" is a registered trademark of Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo, Inc.

"In my restless dreams; I see that town…."

- Mary Sunderland

"Unlike the world of our Lord, it is a world in extreme flux.

Unexpected doors or walls, moving floors, odd creatures….

Anyone swallowed up by that world will live there for eternity, undying.

They will haunt that realm as a spirit.

How can our Lord forgive such an abomination….?"

- anon

IT WAS COLD OUTSIDE. But the sky was clear. And the sun was shining. From his window on the fourth floor of Hotel South Ashfield, Richard Brent could see people walking along the street, heading for the subway, or racing to the local mall to catch the best offers before anyone else. Cars crawled along the road, their engines and drivers grumbling about the morning commuter traffic.

Richard Brent could see all this, but he wasn't paying it any attention. Just like all those people down there on the street weren't paying attention to the South Ashfield Heights apartment building that stood derelict by the road. Its signs and brickwork, window frames and guttering, all flaking under the slow, but incessant strokes of time. Nobody cared. Everyone went about their daily lives, seeing the building, but not seeing it, not caring about what it once was, what it had become. If they had heard its supposed history then they ignored it, tossed it aside as urban myth, or kept it deep in the recesses of their minds, never mentioned or spoken of, but always kept close, like a Talisman held tightly to their chests.

Nobody cared.

Richard Brent cared.

It was all he cared about.

South Ashfield Heights had a long history of strange occurrences. Deaths, murders, disappearances, until finally, or so it seemed to the outside world, the residents had all moved out. Gone. To new places far away where no-one would know their names. But Richard Brent knew the truth. He knew where the apartment block's history really led.

But then again, this was only what he'd read. This wasn't information proved to be fact by thorough investigation. This was all hear say. Folk tales. But he believed them. From the first day in the library when he'd been rifling through the shelves during research for a local news story in his hometown in Wyoming. That book had fallen from the top shelf. Dusty and tattered Richard had felt compelled to pick it up.

Whispers from Silent Hill by Ian O' Connor. There was no publishing date, yet the spine creaked as if it hadn't been opened in centuries. He'd read the first chapter. Then the second, the third, the fourth, until he was devouring the information held within.

Silent Hill, "a quiet little lakeside resort town," but one with a dark history. Founded on land originally called "The Place of the Silenced Spirits" that, according to legend, was populated by Native Americans until, for reasons still unknown, they abandoned their homes and disappeared.

In 1820, the town was used as a prison camp during the American Civil War, where sadistic executioners were said to torture the prisoners before dispensing "justice" in various forms.

Silent Hill's Brookhaven Hospital was built in the 1880s in response to a plague that had followed immigrants into the area. Similar tragedies seemed to be rife in the town's history, one such legend being the disappearance of the "Little Baroness" and all its passengers when it failed to return to the port of Toluca Lake.

In more modern times, the "Cult of Silent Hill" emerged at the hands of a woman named Dahlia Gillespie who used a highly addictive and hallucinogenic plant called "White Claudia" to manipulate the town's residents. Many deaths occurred, but they were all attributed to natural causes. Various unknown sources claim that Gillespie gave birth to a daughter, Alessa, whom she believed to be the human vessel of her cult's God. Gillespie burned down her house leaving her child trapped inside. In her ensuing comatose state, Alessa divided her soul in two, the other half manifesting into another child, found and raised by a man named Harry Mason and his wife. For seven years Silent Hill remained in its normal state, but the return of the child, now called Cheryl, tore the fabric of time and reality and awakened the town's spiritual past.

Through his research, Richard learned that Silent Hill was now believed to exist in various forms. A normal town, but one that is often clouded by a strange mist and at times, an all-encompassing darkness. A place of moving walls and doors, where nothing is as it seems. A place powerful enough to call to people who live outside it, who's relationship to the town may be just a single stay there, if anything at all. A place you don't want to visit, but feel compelled to go. A door you don't want to see behind, but one you will always open.

And now, or so Richard believed, Silent Hill had made contact again, through the former residents of South Ashfield Heights. He had come here to write the story of Silent Hill. He felt he was finally ready. He would have liked to have spoken to Ian O' Connor about his book, if indeed he was still alive, but there was no trace of him. Nothing on the Internet or in library archives. It was as if he had never existed. But Richard had read enough.

Or so he thought. This morning, while scanning the Internet he'd come across a website called simply, The Bookstore. He'd typed in "Silent Hill" and the search had brought up eleven matches over two pages. He owned all ten books on the first page. He knew them back to front. Unlike O' Connor's book, all these had publishers and Richard had written to them all trying to get in touch with the writers. For a few he received no replies. From most he received letters of apology from businesses that had bought out the previous publishers. "I'm sorry, we have no further information." One by one, the publishing houses had folded.

Now, as the laptop hummed and the screen glowed, Richard clicked onto page two. To his surprise, he found a title he had never heard of before. In all the journals and manuscripts he had trawled through in libraries around the country, there was no mention of this. Breaking The Silence: Memories From Silent Hill.

He clicked on the title to bring up the main page of information, but when it had loaded, the contents only confused him even more. There was no cover picture, no publisher, no reviews from previous buyers. But strangest of all, there was no author.

$9.99 it read beneath the title and before he knew it, Richard had already filled in his details and clicked "submit."

And someone knocked on the door.

Richard looked up, startled, and was surprised when his eyes took several moments to focus. It was getting darker. He glanced out the window and the sky that had been clear just minutes ago was now clouded over.

The knocking again.

Richard walked over to the door and put his face to the peephole. There was no-one there. Nothing but the door opposite his. Confused, Richard began to turn around when the knocking came again. He quickly turned the lock and swung open the door. No-one.

On the floor outside was a rectangular package, wrapped in brown paper. Across the front, in red stamped lettering, it read: The Bookstore.

"That's impossible," Richard muttered to himself as he looked up and down the corridor. It was deserted except for a solitary maid coming out of one of the rooms down the hall. She nodded and smiled, before heading away. Richard picked up the package and stepped back into his room, closing the door behind him.

When he turned around, with his attention still focused on the package in his hands, it was Richard's footsteps that caught his attention first. What struck him was not only the fact that he could hear them at all on the room's carpet, but also the sound that they made. Instead of quiet shuffling, there was a hollow metallic echo. Moving the parcel aside, Richard looked down at his feet. He was standing on a rusty metal grid.

He snapped his gaze up at his room. The window was boarded up by rotten, wooden boards. The sofa was stained and eaten away by mites. The glass doors on the cabinet that stood by the far wall were smashed and one of them hung precariously from its hinges. Books and papers, brown and mottled where they had once been new, were scattered all over the floor. The walls were cracked and the paper was ripped and peeling away. But most disturbing of all, the walls were stained blood red.

The laptop stood on the desk as it had before, but no power ran to it. The screen was blank.

His heart thumping in his chest and in his ears, Richard looked down at the package in his hand. He tore off the paper. It was a journal. Brand new, leather bound in red. A pen was clipped to its spine. His heart skipped a beat when he saw the gold lettering on the cover. Breaking The Silence: Memories From Silent Hill. By Richard Brent.

He almost dropped the book. What did this mean? What was happening? He hadn't written this. Opening the journal and flicking through it perfectly smooth, clean, white pages, he confirmed that he hadn't. Not yet. The pages were all blank.

A piece of card was stuck in the centre. He pulled it out to discover it was actually a postcard. On the front was a picture of a peaceful looking tourist resort. A quiet harbour leading on to a dazzling blue lake. With all the research he had done in the past, Richard knew exactly what this picture was. Toluca Lake, Silent Hill.

He turned over the postcard. In scribbled, uneven hand writing was one sentence. Wish You Were Here.

Richard dropped the book when the stereo crackled into life. A woman read the news in a clear and cheerful voice.

"Police are investigating the disappearance of a Richard Brent, a journalist from Wyoming who was reported missing several days ago by the editor of the newspaper he worked for. Brent was apparently in South Ashfield researching the story behind the derelict apartments there, and whether or not they have any links to the strange cult of Silent Hill. Onto the weather now and - "

As the stereo switched itself off, the phone began ringing. Richard went to grab it before stopping himself. He knew he was losing it. He was close. Too many hours alone in this room. He took a deep breath, closing his eyes to shut out the deep red walls that now seemed to shift and squirm as if they were alive. He picked up the phone.

"Richard Brent," he said.

From the other end came what sounded like a child laughing quietly. It stopped and then whispered mischievously.

"Not anymore."

The phone went dead.

And the room grew darker.

And Richard saw it. From the far wall, next to the cabinet, a hole, no; a ball of light. Not bright, but dull like a lamp shade draped with a grey cloth. It started small, but slowly grew and seemed to edge closer towards him. After several moments Richard thought he could make out shapes in the light. Buildings?

He looked behind him at the boarded up window and thought of the people he had seen on the street outside. The cars, the daily life, the people who didn't care. Oblivious. And in that one instant, with the darkness of the hotel room behind him and the growing orb in front, Richard recalled a line from his favourite novel. William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist.

What looked like morning was the beginning of endless night.

The dull light was almost on him now and he could smell the stale air that emanated from it. His hotel room was gone and all Richard Brent could see before him were the faded outlines of houses, shops, trees and roads, shrouded in a silent fog.

"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear."

- H.P. Lovecraft.